films-directed-by-arthur-penn

"Hunter von Leer - Sandy"

"[after killing a man, dressed in a bonnet and shawl] Granny's tired now."

"The first time I met Sandy, he was rustling on his own. He had a stolen cavalry pony and he kept this dog. As soon as he would kill a steer, why he'd cut the brand off and feed it to the dog. So before they could get enough evidence to convict him, they'd have to lock that dog up and pick through his shit for a week before they could find the brand."

"The closer you get to Canada, the more things'll eat your horse."

"[to Clayton, whispering] You know what woke you up? You just had your throat cut."

"We had a famous painter out here last year... did last scenes. That man must have painted ten squares miles of canvas... and not one human face! And I wish he could have been here to paint that boy, Sandy, hanging up there so decoratively against the mountains. Because his pink tongue and his white face would have just set off the green of Montana splendidly. I mean, it would have made the damnedest bank calendar you ever saw!"

"Why don't we just take a walk and we'll just talk about the Wild West and how to get the hell out of it!"

"David Braxton: This is my fourth frontier and I know how they run. I was in the California gold fields before I was eighteen, I was at the rush at Alder Gulch and I went with the grazing committee to South America. These long ropers in the Missouri Breaks are a mixed bag: barbers from Minneapolis, failed grangers, Scandinavian half-breeds, wolfers and woodcutters, dishonest apprentices, raftsmen, poisoners - you give them a chance and they'll waste everything!"

"Cal: A 44.40 in the brain pan would be my sentence for him. Now I don't know why you don't want to go along with that, Tom!"

"Little Tod: Damn, I don't know why they had to put Canada all the way up here."

"Marlon Brando - Robert E. Lee Clayton"

"Jack Nicholson - Tom Logan"

"Randy Quaid - Little Tod"

"Kathleen Lloyd - Jane Braxton"

"Frederic Forrest - Cary"

"Harry Dean Stanton - Cal"

"John McLiam - David Braxton"

"John P. Ryan - Cy"

"Sam Gilman - Hank Rate"

"Steve Franken - Lonesome Kid"

"Richard Bradford - Pete Marker"

"James Greene - Hellsgate rancher"

"Luana Anders - Hellsgate rancher's wife"

"Danny Goldman - Baggage clerk"

"I'd like almost anythin' better 'n' bein' burnt up."

"Well, you're about the last of your kind, old man. If I was a better businessman than I am a man hunter, I'd put you in the circus."

"These middle class minds! They don't know what passion is — what ecstasy is! What it's like to be possessed! I'm going to be a famous dancer, I am, I just know it."

"Without style you're dead ducks, kiddos."

"Our Danilo will maybe be a famous poet one day — and I definitely will be a famous dancer! And we're all going to do wonderful things! And if anyone disagrees they can leave. School's ending, kiddos, and it's out into this world with us all. We are poised and ready to fly."

"I love you like the Pilgrim loves the Holy Land, Like the wayfarer loves his wayward ways, Like the immigrant that I am loves America, And the blind man the memory of his sighted days."

"I was losing my old friends, and I wasn't making any new ones. I walked around looking sad and miserable, hoping that everyone would recognize what a tragic figure I was."

"Sometimes I can actually see the whole Universe, the galaxies, the stars, the planets — and yes, when stars collide it's out of loneliness. They're out there orbiting in the void, and they collide, as if to embrace. God, I hope I'm alive when we land on the moon. … Let's make a promise to each other. The minute that first man lands that first foot on the moon, that very instant — you'll think of me — and I, if such things are possible, I will think of you.."

"Too bad! — now I'm hooked."

"To get quickly to the point, Four Friends is the best film yet made about the sixties, that harrowed time of war, prosperity, and broken promises, of turning on and dropping out to colors described as psychedelic, when establishment came to be written with a capital "E." … It's a film that embraces the looks, sounds, speech, and public events of the sixties, but not in the way of a documentary. It has the quality of legend, a fable remembered. The title is somewhat misleading, for although Four Friends is about the coming of age of three young men and the young woman they each love in turn, it's principally the story of Danilo Prozor (Craig Wasson). Danilo is the Yugoslavian-born son of immigrant parents, who arrives in this country in 1948 at the age of twelve and spends the next decade and a half sorting out the reality of America from his dream of it … Danilo never refers to this country as the United States but always as America — it's not a political union but a concept from childhood. …Four Friends is about ordinary people, but not ordinary people who speak a predictable, commonplace vernacular. They take leaps into the unknown and occasionally come up spouting what sounds like rubbish, which is part of the film's extraordinary style and what separates it from a kind of fiction that aspires to do nothing more than reproduce actuality. Mr. Wasson is very fine in a long difficult role that, I assume, is the beginning of a major film career, but then there's not a shabby performance in the picture. Four Friends … is one of Mr. Penn's most deeply felt achievements, ranking alongside Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant, and Little Big Man. For Mr. Tesich, it is another original work by one of our best young screenwriters."

"Somewhere in the middle of My Dinner With Andre, Andre Gregory wonders aloud if it's not possible that the 1960s were the last decade when we were all truly alive — that since then we've sunk into a bemused state of self-hypnosis, placated by consumer goods and given the illusion of excitement by television. Walking out of Four Friends, I had some of the same thoughts. This movie brings the almost unbelievable contradictions of that decade into sharp relief, not as nostalgia or as a re-creation of times past, but as a reliving of all of the agony and freedom of the weirdest ten years any of us is likely to witness. … The movie is ambitious. It wants to take us on a tour of some of the things that happened in the 1960s, and some of the ways four midwestern kids might have responded to them. It also wants to be a meditation on love, and on how love changes during the course of a decade. … The wonder is not that Four Friends covers so much ground, but that it makes many of its scenes so memorable that we learn more even about the supporting characters than we expect to. … this is a movie that remembers times past with such clarity that there are times it seems to be making it all up. Did we really say those things? Make those assumptions? Live on the edge of what seemed to be a society gone both free and mad at once? Some critics have said the people and events in this movie are not plausible. I don't know if they're denying the movie's truth, or arguing that from a 1980s point of view the '60s were just a bad dream. Or a good one."

"A charming, heartfelt, sometimes insightful look at four friends who form strong bonds while in high school in the early 1960s, and then desperately cling to that love during the turbulent social upheavals that marked the end of the decade. Unfortunately, Four Friends attempts to cover so much ground that at times the film becomes frustratingly muddled. … Though Four Friends runs out of gas toward the end, it's filmed with obvious love for the characters and features outstanding performances from the underrated Wasson, Thelen and Simon. Well worth seeing."

"Craig Wasson - Danilo"

"Jodi Thelen - Georgia"

"Michael Huddleston - David"

"Jim Metzler - Tom"

"Miklos Simon - Mr. Prozor"

"Elizabeth Lawrence - Mrs. Prozor"

"Julia Murray - Adrienne"

"Reed Birney - Louie"

"James Leo Herlihy - Mr. Carnahan"

"Lois Smith - Mrs. Carnahan"

"Glenne Headly - Lola"

"Natalia Nogulich - Vera"

"I swear to God, Mr. Lucas, when I hear music something happens to me and I either have to move, or scream my head off or something. Something's in my blood, sir, and I don't know what it is, but I know that if I can't dance I'd die."